The Hating Game: A Novel

At six thirty P.M. my knee begins jiggling.

“Will you be late?”

“None of your business.” Goddamn it, will Joshua ever leave? He’s worked an eleven-hour day and still looks as fresh as a daisy. I want to lie facedown on my bed.

“Didn’t you say seven? How are you getting there?”

“Cab.”

“I’m headed there too. I’ll give you a ride. I insist.” Joshua’s face has been the picture of amusement throughout this little exchange. He’s waiting for me to fess up about lying. It feels good to know I have Danny as the ace up my sleeve.

“Fine. Whatever.” My fury over the team-building hijack has burned away, leaving a husk. Everything is spiraling slowly out of control.

I head to the ladies room, makeup bag in hand. My footsteps echo in the empty corridor. I haven’t had a date in a long time. I’m too busy. Between work, hating Joshua Templeman, and sleeping, I have no time for anything else.

Joshua cannot believe anyone would want to spend time in my company. To him I’m a repugnant little shrew. I carefully draw my eyeliner into a tiny cat’s-eye. I wipe off my lipstick until only the stain is left. I put a spray of perfume into my bra and give myself a little wink and a pep talk.

I have a dangly pair of earrings in the side pocket of my makeup bag and I hook them on. Office to evening, like those magazine articles. I’m tugging up my bra when I bump squarely into Joshua outside the bathroom. He is holding my coat and bag in hand. The shock of making contact with his body clashes through me.

He looks at me strangely. “Why’d you do all that?”

“Gee, thanks.” I hold my hand out and he hooks my bag onto it. He holds on to my coat and pushes the elevator button.

“So I get to see your car.” I try to break the silence. That thought is more nerve-racking than seeing Danny. It’s such an enclosed space. Have Joshua and I ever even sat next to each other before? I doubt it.

“I’ve been imagining it for so long. I’ve been thinking it’s a Volkswagen beetle. A rusty white one, like Herbie.”

“Guess again.” He is hugging my coat idly. His fingers twiddle the cuff. Against his body it looks like a kid’s jacket. I feel sorry for this poor coat. I hold my hand out but he ignores me.

“MINI Cooper, early 1980s. Kermit green. The seat won’t go back so your knees are on either side of the steering wheel.”

“Your imagination is quite vivid. You drive a 2003 Honda Accord. Silver. Filthy messy inside. Chronic gearbox issues. If it were a horse, you’d shoot it.” The elevator arrives and I step in cautiously.

“You’re a way better stalker than I am.” I feel a chill of fear when I see his big thumb push the B button. He looks down at me, his eyes dark and intense. He’s clearly deliberating something.

Maybe he’ll murder me down there. I’ll end up dead in a Dumpster. The investigators will see my fishnets and heavy eye makeup and assume I’m a hooker. They’ll follow all the wrong leads. Meanwhile, Joshua will be calmly bleaching all my DNA off his shoes and making himself a sandwich.

“Serial killer eyes.” I wish I didn’t sound so scared. He looks over my shoulder at his reflection in the shiny wall of the elevator.

“I see what you mean. You’ve got your horny eyes on.” He spirals his finger dramatically over the elevator button panel.

“Nope, these are my serial killer eyes too.”

He lets out a deep breath and pushes the emergency stop button and we judder to a halt.

“Please don’t kill me. There’s probably a camera.” I take a step backward in fright.

“I doubt it.” He looms over me. He raises his hands and I start to lift my arms to shield my face like I’m in some awful schlocky drive-in horror movie. This is it. He’s going to strangle me. He’s lost his sanity.

He scoops me off the floor by my waist and balances my ass on the handrail I’ve never noticed before. My arms drop to his shoulders and my dress slides to the top of my thighs. When he glances down he lets out a rough breath which sounds like I’m strangling him.

“Put me down. This isn’t funny.” My feet make little ineffectual spirals. This isn’t the first time a big kid’s thrown his weight around with me. Marcus DuShay in third grade once slung me onto the hood of the principal’s car and ran off laughing. The plight of the little humans. There is no dignity for us in this oversize world.

“Visit me up here for a sec.”

“What on earth for?” I try to slide down but he spans his hands on my waist and presses me against the wall. I squeeze his shoulders until I come to the informed conclusion that his body is extravagant muscle under these Clark Kent shirts.

“Holy shit.” His collarbone is like a crowbar under my palms. I say the only idiotic thing I can think of. “Muscles. Bones.”

“Thanks.”

We are both desperately out of breath. When I press my leg against him for balance, his hand wraps around my calf.

When he puts one hand on my jaw and tilts my head back, I wait for the squeeze to start. At any moment, his warm palm will snap tight and I’ll begin to die. Nose to nose. Breath against breath. One of his fingertips is behind my earlobe and I shiver when it slides.

“Shortcake.”

The sweet little word dissolves and I swallow.

“I’m not going to kill you. You’re so dramatic.” Then he presses his mouth lightly against mine.

Neither of us closes our eyes. We stare at each other like always, closer than we’ve ever been. His irises are ringed blue-black. His eyelashes lower and he looks at me with an expression like resentment.

His teeth catch my bottom lip in a faint bite, and goose bumps spread. My nipples pinch. My toes curl in my shoes. I accidentally touch him with my tongue when I check for damage, although it didn’t hurt. It was too soft, too careful. My brain is whirring hopelessly with explanations of what is happening, and my body begins to better its grip.

When he leans in again and begins to move his mouth against mine, softly plying it open, the penny drops.

Joshua. Templeman. Is. Kissing. Me.

For a few seconds I’m frozen solid. It seems I’ve forgotten how to kiss; it’s been so long since it’s been a daily activity. Not seeming to mind, he explains the rules with his mouth.

The Kissing Game goes like this, Shortcake. Press, retreat, tilt, breathe, repeat. Use your hands to angle just right. Loosen up until it’s a slow, wet slide. Hear the drum of blood in your own ears? Survive on tiny puffs of air. Do not stop. Don’t even think about it. Shudder a sigh, pull back, let your opponent catch you with lips or teeth and ease you back into something even deeper. Wetter. Feel your nerve endings crackle to life with each touch of tongue. Feel a new heaviness between your legs.

The aim of the game is to do this for the rest of your life. Screw human civilization and all it entails. This elevator is home now. This is what we do now.

Do not fucking stop.

He tests me and pulls back a fraction. The cardinal rule broken. I pull his mouth back to mine with my hand fisted at the scruff of his neck. I’m a quick study and he’s the perfect tutor.

He tastes like those spearmints he’s always crunching. Who chews mints? I tried it once and burned my mouth out. He does it to annoy me, flickers of amusement in his eyes at my irritated huff. I nip him now in retribution, but it urges him closer against me, body hard, warming me everywhere we connect. Our teeth chink together.

What the fuck is happening? I ask silently with my kiss.

Shut up, Shortcake. I hate you.

If we were actors in a movie we’d be bumping against walls, buttons flying, the fishnet of my stockings shredded, and my shoes falling off. Instead, this kiss is decadent. We’re leaning against a sunlit wall, dreamily licking ice cream cones, rapidly succumbing to heat stroke and nonsensical hallucinations.

Here, come a little closer, it’s all melting. Lick mine and I will definitely lick yours.

Gravity catches me by the ankle and begins to drag me off the handrail. Joshua hoists me up higher with a hand on the back of my thigh. From this tiny loss of his mouth I growl in outraged frustration. Get back here, rule breaker. He’s wise enough to obey.

The sound he makes in reply is like huh. The kind of amused sound people make when they discover something unexpected yet pleasing. That I-should-have-known sound. His lips curve and I touch his face. The first smile Joshua’s ever had in my presence is pressed against my lips. I pull back in astonishment, and in one millisecond his face has defaulted back to grave and serious, albeit flushed.

A harsh burr comes from the elevator speaker, and we both jolt when a tinny voice ahems. “Everything okay in there?”

We freeze in a tableau entitled Busted. Joshua reacts first, leaning over to press the intercom.

“Bumped the button.” He slowly sets me down onto the ground and backs away a few paces. I hook my elbow on the handrail, my legs sliding out on roller skates.

“What the fuck was that?” I wheeze with the last of my air.

“Basement, please.”

“Right-o.” The elevator slides down about three feet and the doors open. If he’d waited another half second, it would have never happened. My coat is in a crumpled mess on the floor, and he picks it up, dusting it off with surprising care.

“Come on.”

He walks off without a backward glance. My earrings are caught in my hair, tangled by his hands. I look for an exit. There are none. The elevator doors snap shut behind me. Joshua unlocks an arrogantly sporty black car and when I reach the passenger door we face each other. My eyes are big fried eggs. He has to turn away so I don’t see him laugh. I catch the reflection of his white teeth on a nearby van’s rearview mirror.

“Oh dear,” he drawls, turning back, dragging his hand over his face to wipe away the smile. “I’ve traumatized you.”

“What . . . what . . .”

“Let’s go.”

I want to sprint away but my legs won’t hold me up.

“Don’t even think about it,” he tells me.

I slide into his car and nearly fall unconscious. His scent is intensified in here perfectly, baked by summer, preserved by snow, sealed and pressurized inside glass and metal. I inhale like a professional perfumer. Top notes of mint, bitter coffee, and cotton. Mid notes of black pepper and pine. Base notes of leather and cedar. Luxurious as cashmere. If this is what his car smells like, imagine his bed. Good idea. Imagine his bed.

He gets in, tosses my coat on the backseat, and I look sideways at his lap. Holy shit. I avert my eyes. Whatever he’s got there is impressive enough to make my eyes slide back again.

“You’ve died of shock,” he chides like a schoolteacher.

My breath is shaking out of me, and he turns to look at me, eyes poison-black. He raises his hand and I flinch back. He frowns, pauses, then twists my closest earring carefully back into position.

“I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I still want to.” He reaches for the other earring, and his inner wrist is close enough to bite. Painstakingly, he tugs the caught strands of hair until my earring hangs properly again.

“I want to. So bad, you have no idea.”

He turns the car on, backs out, and drives as though nothing happened.

“We need to talk about this.” My voice is rough and dirty. His fingers flex on the steering wheel.

“It seemed like the right moment.”

“But you kissed me. Why would you do that?”

“I needed to test a theory I’ve had for a while. And you really, really kissed me back.”

I twist in my seat and the lights ahead go red. He slows to a stop and looks at my mouth and legs.

“You had a theory? More like, you were trying to mess me up before my date.” Cars behind us are beeping and I look over my shoulder. “Go.”

“Oh, that’s right, your date. Your imaginary fake date.”

“It’s not imaginary. I’m meeting Danny Fletcher from design.”

The look of shocked surprise on his face is magnificent. I want to commission a portrait artist to capture it in oils, so I can pass it down to future generations. It. Is. Priceless.

Cars begin to pull out from either side behind us, horns bleating and wailing. A string of road-rage obscenities manage to jerk him from his stupor.

“What?” He finally notices the green light and accelerates sharply, braking to avoid hitting a car swerving in front. He wipes one hand over his mouth. I’ve never seen Joshua so flustered.

“Danny Fletcher. I’m meeting him in ten minutes. That’s where you’re driving me. What is wrong with you?”

He says nothing for several blocks. I stare stubbornly at my hands and all I can think about is his tongue in my mouth. In my mouth. I estimate there’s probably been about ten billion elevator kisses in the history of mankind. I hate us for the cliché.

“Did you think I was lying?” Well, technically I was lying, but only at first.

“I always assume you’re lying.” He changes lanes in an angry swerve, an ominous black thundercloud of temper settling over him.

Here’s a fact. Hating someone is exhausting. Each pulse of blood in my veins takes me closer to death. I waste these ending minutes with someone who genuinely despises me.

I drop my lids so I can remember it again. I’m shimmering with nerves, heaving a box onto my desk at the newly minted B&G building, tenth floor. There is a man by the window, looking out at the early-morning traffic. He turns and we make eye contact for the first time.

I’m never getting another kiss like that again, not for the rest of my life.

“I wish we could be friends,” I accidentally say out loud. I’ve held those words in for so long it feels like I’ve dropped a bombshell. He’s so silent I think maybe he didn’t hear me. But then he casts me a look so contemptuous that I feel a painful twist inside.

“We’ll never, ever be friends.” He says friends like he’d say the word pathetic.

When he slows the car at the front of the bar I’m out and running before he’s even come to a complete stop. I hear him shout my name, annoyed. I register that he calls me Lucy.

I see Danny at the bar, bottle of beer dangling from his fingertips, and I pinwheel through the crowd and fall into his arms. Poor old Danny, who has turned up early like a gentleman, with no idea what kind of crazy woman he’s agreed to spend an evening with.

“Hi.” Danny is pleased. “You made it.”

“’Course!” I manage a shaky laugh. “I need a drink after the day I’ve had.”

I hoist myself like a jockey onto the barstool. Danny signals to the bartender. Identical baseball bats swing on huge screens positioned above the bar. I feel the memory of Joshua’s mouth on mine, and I press my shaking fingertips to my lips.

“A big gin and tonic. As big as you can, please.”

The bartender obliges and I empty half of the contents into my mouth and maybe a little down my chin. I lick the corners of my mouth and I still taste Joshua. Danny catches my eye as I lower the glass.

“Is everything okay? I think you need to tell me about your day.”

I take a good look at him. He’s changed into some dark jeans and a nice button-down check shirt. I like that he’s made an effort to go home and change for me.

“You look nice,” I tell him honestly, and his eyes spark.

“And you look beautiful.” His tone is confidential. He leans his elbow on the bar and his face is open and without malice. I feel a weird bubble of emotion inside my chest.

“What?” I wipe my chin. This man is looking at me like he does not hate me. It’s bizarre.

“I couldn’t exactly tell you at work. But I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl.”

“Oh. Well.” I probably turn bright red and I feel a tightness in my throat.

“You don’t take compliments well.”

“I don’t get many.” It’s the honest truth. He just laughs.

“Oh, sure.”

“It’s true. Unless it’s my mom and dad on Skype.”

“Well, I’ll have to change that. So. Tell me all about you.”

“I work for Helene, as you know,” I start uncertainly.

He nods, his mouth quirking.

“And that’s about it.”

Danny smiles, and I nearly reel backward off my barstool. I’m so badly socialized I can barely converse with normal human beings. I want to be at home on my couch with all of the pillows piled on my head.

“Yes, but I want to know about you. What do you do for fun? Where’s your family from?”

His face is so open and guileless. I think of children before the world ruins them.

“May I go and freshen up first? I came straight from the office.” I swallow the other half of my glass. The faint mint on my tongue deadens the flavor.

He nods and I make a beeline in the direction of the bathrooms. I lean against the wall outside them and take a tissue from the front of my bra and press it to the corners of my eyes. Beautiful.

A shadow darkens the hall, and I know it’s Joshua. Even in the furthest corners of my peripheral vision, his shape is more familiar than my own shadow. He’s holding the coat I left in his backseat.

I burst out laughing, and I keep laughing until the tears stripe down my face, almost certainly ruining my makeup.

“Fuck off,” I tell him, but he only comes closer. He takes my chin and studies my face.

The memory of the kiss floats up between us, and I can’t look him in the eye. I remember the groan I made into his mouth. Humiliation kicks in.

“Don’t.” I slap him away.

“You’re crying.”

I hug myself. “No I’m not. Why are you even here?”

“Parking is a nightmare around here. Your coat.”

“Oh, my coat. Sure. Whatever. I’m too tired to fight with you tonight. You win.”

He looks confused so I clarify. “You’ve seen me laugh, and cry. You made me kiss you when I should have slapped your smug face. You’ve had a good day. Go and watch the game and eat pretzels.”

“Is that the prize you think I’m playing for? To see you cry?” He shakes his head. “It’s really not.”

“Sure it is. Now go away,” I tell him more forcefully. He backs away and leans against the opposite wall.

“Why are you hiding here? Shouldn’t you be out there charming the shit out of him?” He looks in the direction of the bar and rubs his hand over his face.

“I needed a minute. And it’s not always that easy, trust me.”

“I’m sure you won’t have any trouble.”

He doesn’t sound sarcastic. I wipe my tears and look at the tissue. Quite a bit of mascara on it. I heave a shuddery sigh.

“You look fine.” It’s the nicest thing he’s ever said to me.

I begin patting my hand along the wall, trying to find the portal to another dimension, or at least the door to the ladies room. Anything to get away from him. He puts his hand into his hair, his face twisting with agitation.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you, okay. It was a fucking stupid move on my part. If you want to report me to HR—”

“That’s your problem? You’re scared I’m going to report you?” My voice is raising loud enough that bar patrons turn. I take a deep breath and when I speak again I am quieter.

“You’ve broken me down so completely, I can’t even handle it when a guy tells me I’m beautiful.”

Dismay spreads across his face.

“That’s why I’m crying. Because Danny told me I’m a beautiful girl, and I nearly fell off the barstool. You’ve ruined me.”

“I . . .” he begins to say, but he’s got nothing. “Lucy, I—”

“There’s nothing left you can do to me. You win today.”

From the look on his face, I think I’ve landed a punch. His shadow recedes along the floor, and then he’s gone.